Ahoy, Spider-Buddies!

Greetings, Spider-Buddies! It's your old pal Land Captain. Mike P or Mikep or Mike Podgorski or whatever he's calling himself now said things were looking pretty dire in the Spider-Man strip, and called me in to comment on it for a week or so until things become less dire.

Hold on, by dire he meant boring, didn't he?

Well, I guess I can still do it! Let's hope I can help make these next few weeks less "dire" for all involved! Also, not to worry, Mike will still be updating Choose Your Own Blogventure (which I'm in) and his web-comic PC/MS! What, you weren't worried?

I'm going to start things off with a poll. Let's help ol' Mike figure out what he wants to be called, since the poor fellow can't get his head on straight.

Metapost: News!

I had an idea earlier today, which will be implemented on Sunday. Just a heads-up.

Metapost: OH MY GOD I AM SO SORRY

So, what happened was that the phone line got connected all right. It got connected pretty much right away, actually, and considering how the Internet and phone line are part of a package deal, I assumed, "Thank god! Now I can update everything and whatnot!"

Yeah.

I spent the Monday after I moved on the phone with tech support, and the final verdict was that my old modem was busted, and I had to get a new one. No big deal, kind of, so I went out and bought a brand new modem, with wireless and everything, and I brought it home and hooked it up and looked down at its blinking red light, perplexed and rather angry.

"What devilry is this?" I exclaimed, and I spent the better portion of a night trying to figure it out.

Tuesday, I was on the phone again, and someone was sent. By Thursday, I had another message telling me that the problem was fixed and everything was a-ok. Yet the red light still blinked. On the phone again, and it turns out that they sent the person to the old house. Apologies were profuse, and I was assured that the problem would be remedied in a few days...

A FEW BUSINESS DAYS, THAT IS!

So I waited. Plans were made to go to a library and at least let everyone know what was going on and putting the blog in the hands of a retainer for a few days, something I remembered several days into this whole fiasco, but every single plan was shot down like one of those "Duck Hunt" ducks: with a light gun held up to the television screen. Actually, just by people being really inconsiderate to my friends and myself. Stymied at every turn, and all that. I did try to put up a post from my cell phone, but it refused to send.

What's important now is that my bit of the Internet is up and running, and now it would seem I've got me some wireless connection. What does this mean for you? I have no idea. I'm just pleased with the wireless.

Anyway, I'll get the backlog of strips up as soon as I can. Right now, I've got twelve minutes, so we'll see what I can get done.

Metapost: Thing I Liked

For a while, I was doing a little thing called Thing I Liked, or TIL, in which I would choose something I liked from each strip each day. A sort of silver lining to the cloud, if you will. I stopped doing it a while ago (late January, actually) and I forgot to start doing it again. I'd like to do it again, but I'll leave my fate up to you folks. So there's a poll up now, just in in Choose Your Own Blogventure, except instead of choosing what exciting antics happen next, you'll choosing whether or not I do TIL. I'm sort of ashamed that I turned this into a plug for Choose Your Own Blogventure, but seriously, you should be reading that. Please. At least I didn't plug my other two things (PC/MS and Third Attempt!, if you were wondering) so... wait.

Oh.

Well, vote on whether or not I should do TIL, and then perhaps go look at my other stuff which is all TIL. See what I did there? I've passed some sort of shame threshold. I'm also ranting because it's nearly 5AM and I am tired. So I shall sleep now. Remember to vote and read stuff!

Metapost: Larry Lieber in the Funnybooks

So I have this other Blog called Third Attempt, see? It's a new version, dealing with various other bits of entertainment, like full-fledged comic books. So I was going through my comics to review, and I found one. It was a Spider-Man comic, of course, and when I cracked it open and looked at the credits, whose name should be looking up at me?

Larry Lieber's, of course.

Larry Lieber is the gentleman who is supposed to be drawing the Amazing Spider-Man comic strip right now, so you may or may not be interested in seeing a little bit of his comic book work from the mid-eighties.

Here's the review.

Metapost: Help!

This is a post so that you, the reader, can give me constructive criticism and whatnot.

Metapost: Hello! =)

If you're coming here from the Comics Curmudgeon, hello! I hope you find this little Blog to your liking.

Metapost: New Link Lists

I took out the "About Me" thing that was on the side, and replaced most of the link lists with this Blog list thing Blogger can do now. Now only does it give you the link and the official name of the Blog, however long it may be, but it tells you when they last updated which is pretty neat. That said, it looks like a lot of the links are pretty much defunct now. Oh well.

Also, you should check out A "Blog About Things, which is about the comic strip "Herb and Jamaal", apparently.

Metapost: Late Update

The update on Sunday will be a bit late. No idea how late at this point, but it should be up by late afternoon/early evening.

Metapost: Yet Another Attempt to Advertise

Once again, you should really check out Choose Your Own Blogventure because people say it's rather nifty. By people, I mean only one person has ever said anything about it.

Also, if you're at all interested in a look at the actual person who runs this Blog, then you should check out Third Attempt. You can find out more about me by reading it, though right now I'm basically just complaining about things. So it's just like what I do here, just with my actual life instead.

Metapost: Trouble Looming

I've been doing some thinking about this whole daily update thing. I mean, it'll be no problem for most of them, but there'll be the bit where I'm moving that'll be sort of difficult to do much of anything on the computer. It's not going to be for another few months, yes, but that's at least one or two days when I won't be able to do daily updates. I mean, not only will my computer not be hooked up and my internet not be running for a day or two, but after spending a day moving various bits of furniture and boxes full of multimedia, I probably won't be able to get anywhere to do the blog. However, a pledge is a pledge, even if I sort of have to change it around a little bit. So, if things go well, there will still be daily updates. I just might not be the one doing them, once or twice.

The short version of this is, I need someone to back me up on this when backing up is needed. You know, like if I get sick or have business to take care of which means I can't get to a computer. Like moving. If you're interested, e-mail me at mikep3313@hotmail.com and we'll set something up.

I'm going to try to remain as unbiased as possible for this, so everyone's got a pretty equal chance. The deadline for contacting me about trying out is June 15th, 2008.

Metapost: Pledge

It has been over a month since I missed a daily update. Granted, some of the updates were pretty shoddy (shoddier than normal, at least) but I have a good reason for that which I will not bore you with unless you really want to hear it. Now, in about five months (give or take a day) this Blog will somehow be up for two years, making it the longest thing I've ever consecutively kept up with. Therefore, I pledge to you, the reader, that I will not miss a daily update. Not ever again, but at least until October 16th.

I will face down overwhelming odds (Work! School! Moving! Personal problems! Unforeseen difficulties!) to write down not very snarky or funny comments about this strip every day. I'm honestly surprised this Blog is all that popular and that people actually read it regularly. In any case, thanks for reading everyone! Here's counting down to the big... 2!

(Also, check out my other two blogs where my psychoses and general writing skill become apparent! Third Attempt and Choose Your Own Blogventure!)

Choose Your Own Blogventure

Choose Your Own Blogventure is now live. It's my new Blog (which will not replace this one) where you vote on where the story goes. There's more information over there, if you want it.

Metpost: Crime and Punisher

While looking for random tidbits of whatnot, I found a thread on a message board which also mentioned the Spider-Man strip collection (which I shall need to get, of course, the only impediment is that it will cost me at least $30 due to its availability being limited to the United Kingdom) but also led me to a Punisher site with a complete Spider-Man arc on display. Here's the arc. It features Punisher and the Owl, and is exactly 100 strips long. I shall have to do some counting and come up with an average storyline length so I'm not so in the dark.

News of a Most Relevant Sort

So I was looking at the Internet, I was, and voting against Brian Clevinger on the Eagle Awards when I get to a section about reprint compilations. I was sort of blah about it, when I noticed The Daily Adventures of Spider-Man Volume One. A little bit of research lets me know that this is a compilation of the newspaper comic strip starting from day one. The only problem is that it appears to only be available in the United Kingdom. While I have plenty of Internet reviews saying this exists, can anyone actually confirm it?

Message Board! (Also: Late)

We've had a message board for a while, but now it's actually... well, better, I guess. Go take a look and have discussions that you just can't have in the comments thread of a post. You'll still be able to do that, though.

In that spirit, comment on this post here!
I will admit that this is just a thinly-veiled attempt to get you on the message board. I'm pretty shameless sometimes, but at least I'm not asking for money.

Ah, King Features Syndicate, which sends out the Amazing Spider-Man, is not working for some reason. I have to wait until it is working to post, which could be whenever (but hopefully it'll work soon).

Mentioned!

Frequent reader Natalie pointed out that the Amazing Spider-Blog was mentioned in this article. Absolutely no one is more surprised than me at this, but that does not really diminish the fact that I am grateful for this. I feel like I've hit the big-time, now!

METASTUFF: Poll and More!

Oh dear god but things have been hectic. Between sickness, holidays, trips, and problems with college (and the paying for thereof) I have not been able to post. Nor will I really be able to for another week or two, but I will be back! Count on that. Until then, I guess we'll update the poll. It looks like Weasel and the Persuader have tied for first place so vote on them, I guess. It'll end this Wednesday, and get changed whenever.

Metapost: A Bit of a Break

Day in, day out, it's the same thing. Watching Spider-Man do non-heroic things while his wife does things infinitely more heroic than him. Then there's the antagonists. When it's not a lackluster guy in a suit (who is never, ever the Kingpin) it's a super-villain who totally fails to live up to expectations. Except maybe the Shocker, because that guy is sort of low on the villain totem pole anyway. In any case, I need to get away from this monotony for a bit. Therefore, I'll be taking a bit of a break from this blog. Which is not to say that it will totally stop updating or go on hiatus or whatever. I have someone lined up to take over from tomorrow's post for a few weeks.

Hope you don't like the new guy too much.

-Mike Podgorski

Googling Simon Krandis

Just to prove I could be just like Peter, I put on my detecting pajamas and Googled Simon Krandis. Since this is the real world, my results were a bit different from Peter's. Here's the current top results:Here's a closer look:
I'm not sure whether or not I should feel proud of this.